Curriculum & Learning

A Passion for LearningLea and Garsdon CE School strives for excellence. We adopt a variety of approaches to children’s learning, using class, group and individual teaching as appropriate. Sometimes areas of learning are taught as separate subjects whilst at other times we adopt a more creative curriculum and use topics of interest. Work and play are not seen as opposites, but as complementary for outstanding learning. We use our wonderful grounds which house a covered play area for our younger children, an outdoor classroom, vegetable patch and a spacious playing field.

Children are encouraged to “have a go” and feel comfortable asking for help and discussing any issue, no matter how large or small, with their class teachers and support staff.

The National CurriculumThe Primary National Curriculum has changed as of September 2014. The new Primary Curriculum applies to children in Year 1 through to Year 6 and covers all subjects from Maths and English through to Art and Computing. A guide for parents can be viewed here.

We have looked carefully at the new curriculum and set out ‘two year rolling programmes’ which show when we will teach each part of the curriculum over the course of 2 years. This ensures children in mixed age classes are taught everything set out in the curriculum whichever class they may be in. We have linked the subjects as much as possible in each term to allow the children to learn through a ‘topic based’ approach to learning; in this way more than one subject may be taught within a lesson and a range of skills learned.

The children in Reception will continue to follow the Early Years Foundation Stage, with the areas of learning being linked by teachers to the National Curriculum wherever possible.

The topic titles on the rolling programmes are a starting point for each topic and may change or be adapted, often based on the children’s interests, to make the learning as inspiring and engaging as possible.

Below are the Rolling Programmes for all year groups across the school:

AssessmentAssessment is an essential part of school life, and has become part of the children’s everyday classroom routine. We assess our children’s progress and achievements in two ways:

Formative assessment. This goes on throughout the school year and helps us to plan the most appropriate work for children to undertake next.

Summative assessment. This takes the form of a test to help us gauge the child’s level of understanding at a particular time.

Children undertake Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in the May of Year 2 and Year 6. In addition they take optional tests in Years 3, 4 and 5.

SATsAt Key Stage 1, most 7 year olds are expected to reach Level 2. At Key Stage 2, most 11 year olds are expected to reach Level 4. At Key Stage 1 children are given a Teacher Assessment for each area that must be reported on. The teacher will get the children to carry out tests and tasks to inform this Teacher Assessment.

At Key Stage 2 the children sit tests for Maths, Reading and Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar at a specified time in May. These are externally marked with results being available in July. The teacher also gives a Teacher Assessment for these subjects and in addition for writing, which reflects their overall achievement at the end of the year.

Our Approach to the Teaching of ReadingAll children are heard to read on a weekly basis by a Teacher or a Teaching Assistant. In Reception, children read individually to an adult to support them in developing their early reading skills and their confidence. In Years 1 to 6, children read as part of a Guided Reading Group where there is the opportunity to share, discuss and interpret a text. In KS1 there is also an emphasis on learning how to read words and sentences.

Reading skills are taught regularly through English lessons and in Reception and KS1 as part of a daily synthetic phonics session. Children learn; phonemes (the sound a letter/letters make), graphemes (the letters that represent those sounds), how to segment and blend the sounds in a word to be able to read and to spell it, and then how to apply these skills to read and write sentences. Children also learn commonly used (high frequency) words and words that can’t be sounded out (tricky words). These are taught through speaking and listening, reading and writing games, activities and songs.

Details of our Reading SchemesReading schemes currently used to support guided reading in school and/or provided for home reading are: